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Friday, July 5, 2013

The Joy of Prosody: Children's Poetry

By Liz Mastin

Children’s
poetry need not consist merely of lines which are appropriately child-like and
rhyme. Today’s children’s poetry can contain good-quality poetry and may serve
as an excellent introduction into the world of poetry in general.

I was fortunate in sitting next to a
children’s book agent at a luncheon last year during the Whidbey Island Writer’s
Conference in Langley.
As I had an opportunity to find out something about what is in demand for children’s books, I also asked her if there were any children’s books featuring
poetry that were doing well.

She suggested several books. I looked online at Amazon, hoping to read a
few sample pages. Right away, one of the recommended books stood out. The name
of the book was “A Whiff of Pine, a Hint of Skunk” by Deborah Ruddell. This
book also had lovely illustrations by Joan Rankin. Reviews on the back of the
book stated “A terrific introduction to poetry, with a smile attached” Kirkus Reviews, “Delightful” School Library Journal, and “Lyrical” Publishers Weekly.

I felt that as an incentive, when writing
children’s poetry, it would pay to buy this book for reference, and I will be
happy to share with you some of the unusual poems it contains and how they are
written!

A Wild Turkey Comments on His Portrait

I find it most
insulting

that you’ve
traced around your hand

and colored all
my feathers

either plain old
brown or tan.

Where’s the
copper? Where’s the gold

that a turkey
should expect?

Where on earth is
raw sienna,

And where is the
respect?

Finally, I’m
baffled

That you’ve made
me look so dumb.

My head is quite
distinguished

And it’s nothing
like your thumb.

This poem is
written with alternating trimeter (three beats) and tetrameter (four beats)
lines. While there are
other feet, (substitutions), the poem is in iambics with da DUM da DUM sounds.) Yet what makes a
poem like this more exceptional is that the messages in the poems are not the tired, so expected ones. This poem opens
the door for learning, as well. A child may want to know, exactly what is rawsienna?
The vocabulary is more elevated, as in the word distinguished.

Here is another:

Moonlit Raccoon

In a watery
mirror

the rugged
raccoon

admires his face

by the light of
the moon:

the mysterious
mask,

The whiskers
beneath,

the sliver of
cricket

still stuck in
his teeth.

This poem is
written in anapestic dimeter. That means it sounds like da da DUM, da da DUM. Anapests have
two soft accents and one strong. Again, the poem is very clever, and you can
hear techniques like alliteration in the way the animal is called a rugged raccoon (two r’s) and in mysterious
mask with its two m’s. The last two lines have alliterative quality with
all the s’s: sliver, still and stuck.

Liz Mastin Bio

Liz Mastin is a poet who lives in Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho during the summer and Bullhead City, Arizona
in winter. She thrives on the study of the great poets, their biographies, the
schools of poetry to which they adhered, and the poetic conventions of the
times in which they lived.

While she enjoys free verse as well as metrical poetry, her
main interest lies in prosody. She notices that most of the enduring poems are
those we can remember and recite. Liz enjoys poetry forms such as the sonnet,
the sestina, the couplet, blank verse, simple quatrains, etc. and she hopes to
see modern poets regain interest in studied metrical poetry.

Liz is currently putting together her first collection of
poems which should be completed this winter. The poems are a mixture of
metrical and free verse poems.

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